For better or worse, Kate Upton is all the rage now in the modelling world. Here she is doing more promotion for Sports Illustrated in a very flattering white dress, and in the past several months, she’s not only covered the SI: Swimsuit edition for the secondconsecutive year, but she’s also been branching out into full-fledged fashion circles with Vogue UK and Vogue Italia covers and a Vogue US spread, among other endeavors. Not bad for a “curvy” girl, right?

As I’ve noted more than once, none of Kate’s success has stopped the shameful body criticism from continuing, and Kate’s polar-boob shoot has served not only to please countless men but also to reignite a lot of sniping over Kate’s atypical (for a model) bikini body. I’ve really been trying to understand the complaints about Kate’s body, but I’m coming up empty on explanations other than possibly because she has a low hip-to-waist ratio. I still think that’s wrong though, and I believe that all of this criticism is affecting her no matter what Kate saysto the contrary.

Recently I was a bit surprised when Chrissy Teigen, lover of all things food, admitted going on a 10-day cleanse immediately before the latest SI: swimsuit shoot. Here’s something that’s truly shocking though — for four months prior to the same shoot, Kate adhered to a cleanse two weeks out of every month. She also worked out with a personal trainer twice a day. Seriously, there’s even a People story on this:

What’s harder than posing almost naked in the freezing cold in Antarctica? Preparing to pose almost naked in the freezing cold in Antarctica.

We chatted with David Kirsch, the trainer who primed Kate Upton for her second Sports Illustrated cover, and let’s just say: Upton must be exhausted.

Kirsch began working with the supermodel back in August, and for the first two weeks, Upton met with him for sessions twice a day. From then on, the model exercised five to six days per week for one and half to two hours until the photo shoot in December.

“[She did] boot camp circuit training mixed in with cardio,” Kirsch tells PEOPLE. “Running, rowing and the elliptical.” He adds that there are six regions a model needs to focus on for an SI: Swimsuit Edition shoot: “Legs, inner thighs, hips, butt, abs and arms. Anything that shows when you’re wearing a bathing suit. Which is … everything!” (Especially when that bathing suit is as tiny as some of the ones Upton sported!)

It wasn’t just the constant sweat sessions that got Upton ready to strip down; she was also extremely careful about what she ate. “She followed my ABC’s – no alcohol, bread or processed carbs – and no sugar – 24/7 with no cheat days,” the trainer reveals.

Along with not eating pasta, pizza, candy or apparently anything else that tastes delicious, Upton did Kirsch’s seven-day cleanse for two weeks out of every month they worked together. And during the other two weeks? She regularly drank protein shakes and green drinks to stay energized.

Despite all that, Kirsch says Upton didn’t complain once throughout the exhaustive process. Though, the same can’t be said about Upton while she was kneeling on an iceberg in nothing but a string bikini. But can you really blame her?

All of that and yet still, people have the nerve to label this girl as fat. These are extreme measures for sure — maybe not for a model in general but definitely for one who is being held up as more “normal” looking than the rest of them. The simple fact that Kate was willing to cleanse for 50% of her life for four months and also workout twice per day tells me that even this “healthy” girl has an unavoidably unhealthy outlook on food. And I’m afraid with all this criticism that she’s only going to get more obsessive as her career progresses.

In other Kate-related news, Upton has just been been revealed as the face of high street retailer Accessorize. Here are the first images from her spring/summer 2013 campaign. Especially in the swimsuit shots, she looks like she’s dropped a few pounds since the SI shoot, doesn’t she?

88 Responses to “Kate Upton did a cleanse 2 weeks per month to prepare for latest SI shoot”

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I’m very worried about all this ‘cleanse’ nonsense. You hear it all the time now, as if it’s a totally normal thing. It’s not. It’s a ridiculous, way too drastic way of dieting that’s not healthy at all. And this from women like Kate and other models who obviously shouldn’t be dieting in the first place.
This People-article also bothers me.
‘boot camp circuit training mixed in with cardio… Running, rowing and the elliptical…’ Freakin” hell. It’s as if girls who do not work out 6 days a week and eat solid food would somehow be unworthy of posing in a bikini.

I prefer the honesty. It lets everyone know she didn’t just wake up with that body like other celebrities claim. Looking at you Blake Lively. Too much false advertising and lies have been spread about these magazine models leaving young girls to feel bad about their own bodies. With the photoshop and extreme dieting it’s easy to fool us into thinking this is a natural female body. It’s good for girls to know this is not natural.

Can I ask a very not pretty question? Doesn’t the cleanse make these girls go to the bathroom for #2 all the time? Lots of pooping time?

T.C. You better believe cleanses make you #2! You carry a lot of weight in waste. expelling that does temporarily slim you.

It is good Upton is saying she has to work to get her body to look like that, but why she doesn’t just maintain a healthier lifestyle rather than this binge diet/cleanse method is beyond my understanding. Some cleanses can be just as harmful to your body as laxatives. They aren’t for month to month uses. I bet she would look more toned if she didn’t cleanse. Her body wouldn’t starve and she would keep any tone she gaining through exercise.

You know what? I think it’s great that these models admit to extreme measures to lose weight rather than the old tired “oh, I just eat right and exercise” BS they’ve been throwing out for ages. Like they’re just normal folks who naturally are skinny as hell and “oh, it’s so easy!” No, it’s not easy and the more we learn about what it really takes to stay that thin, the better. Makes me feel better about my post-second baby body!!

I suppose that’s true. But rather than her being honest about her extreme efforts to be as thin and fit as possible, I’d like to hear her -and fithess trainer!- promote a healthy lifestyle. And not pretending like week-long cleanses and excersizing twice a day is something anybody, fat or thin, man or woman, model or stay-at-home mom, NEEDS to be doing.

A cleanse does not necessarily mean dieting, I know because I just did my first one (and I was a HUGE skeptic) right before the holidays for 30 days. It was no wheat, sugar, salt, alcohol, soy, or yeast. I followed a program of a protein shake with unlimited fresh veggies, along with cleanse powder and other detoxing agents in the second week. I will unequivocally say that I had not felt better and had more energy in 5 years. I plan to do another next months and still drink the protein shake every morning.

I also am tired of hearing how “curvy” Kate is. She’s thin. She’s got big boobs but she’s in no way fat. The fact that you can’t see her ribs seems to make some people think she’s heavy.

The whole “abs” craze is crazy from a fitness perspective. Most people, no matter how little they eat or how hard they exercise will never have the defined abs that are photoshopped onto so many fitness experts and models in the photo shoots we all see. Those who really do have defined abs have the genetic makeup needed first to be able to have them. Only about 30% of us have the genetic makeup to have defined abs. So, calling this girl fat, based on her SI cover is just plain ridiculous. I suppose they could have photoshopped her into showing her ribs but I suspect for her, she’d have to be severely underweight before people will stop giving her grief. I for one hope she doesn’t continue with the cleanses which, again from a fitness perspective are very unhealthy. She’s messing up her metabolism in a big way and if she keeps it up, when she’s 40, she’ll be in big trouble.

I wouldn’t say she is fat, but she isn’t thin, either. However, the fact that she is apple-shaped doesn’t help her – no matter how little weight she gains, she looks like she has a very large stomach.

And still, while she is very beautiful, they Photoshop the heck out of her. Look at photos of her that haven’t been airbrushed to death, and she doesn’t have the small waist you see in all these pictures, nor the muscle tone. Quite the contrary, she is quite saggy and flabby for a “healthy person”.

I don’t mean to be a catty bitch, but if you’re going to promote ‘normalcy’, then lay off the heavy airbrushing, sweetie.

Her body isn’t just all that beautiful to be praised i guees.
Like her body looks like ㅣㅣ <– this, not ) ( <— this. you know what i mean. she just naturally has big big boobs and she's tall with long legs.

Oh please, take one look at her first SI cover and tell me their not fake. Women know what fakers look like. The shine on the skin from having the implants put in, the too-round shape. She has the same type of implant as Kim Kardashian. Trust me, they’re fake. I don’t care how many people think they’re real.

I was thinking about her the other day. I think her main problem is not the waist to hip ratio but the fact that she has very thin legs and arms like that kind of person who doesn’t store fat there so she will always look thin.

Her problem is that she probably doesn’t do much cardio to erase the fat around her lower stomach so it looks weird.

There are plenty of models who do not have a defined waist but somehow manage because of their flat stomachs

THIS!! I think her problem is that she doesn’t do enough cardio to burn the fat. Her arms and legs will always be thin so she thinks she is naturally skinny when, in fact, all the fat goes to her stomach.

Abdominal fat is difficult to burn because you ahve to eat extremely clean, keep an eye on the calories, and do cardio.

Her main problem are her love handles and there are plenty of exercises to work that area.

I don’t young women will read this to follow her plan. They will read this and say “no wonder, there is no way in hell I’m going to do all that. I’d rather stay the way I am”. It’s freeing to know that’s not a natural body shape. They will see it as going through a crazy routine just for a magazine cover but not realistic.

ITA, I did this for a long time, and was very toned and slim, but it was because I had (have, sort of like alcoholism, in some ways even if you’re ‘better’ it doesn’t completely go away) an eating disorder combined with OCD(and was often sick and injured because of the grueling schedule)

So much spin. If they said Kate did all that AFTER the SI photoshoot, I’d totally believe it, but before? Hell no. Take a look at the TMZ photos again. It’s not just her midsection. Yes, she’s naturally thick at the waist, but that amount of exercise should show SOMEWHERE. Now compare those TMZ photos with the latest ones from the promo tour. There’s a difference, no?

Are her people trying to spin it so we can all pretend that her Photoshopped SI photos are real? I think they should’ve just stuck with the lovable schtick about her being happy with her body. Oh, and they threw her trainer under the bus. If we were to believe the story, who’d want to hire him now?

Obviously. But if your aim is to celebrate someone for having a different body type or not being the traditional standard of beauty, why so blatantly Photoshop away just about everything that supposedly makes them special?

Well that cleanse didn’t work unless somebody was cheating on their diet. Even the clowns at TMZ who adore her said she looked heavier. Kate is a cute girl, nothing more. Like I said before if it wasn ‘t for her boobs she wouldn’t even stand out. I like her, I think it’s her fun filled personality that I find adorable. I just wish she was more tone. Some people think SI is trashy but I think the models in SI looks healthier and have more of a normal look then the models who walk the high fashion runways. We used to have healthy models, Tyra Banks and Cindy Crawford were not skinny.

Banks and Crawford weren’t sticks, but had amazing features and proportions! Their faces and poses did wonders on camera.

Kate doesn’t have it. Just because she’s not stick thin and has a hard time losing weight doesn’t make her revolutionary. She’s getting her time now, but once whatever force is trying to make her happen moves on to something else she’ll be forgotten.

Honestly, if the photo shoot doesn’t call for bedroom eyes and boobs what does she have to offer? Her high fashion was cringe worthy and she doesn’t yet know how to dress her body type.

I agree. These comments are shocking. This woman is super thin and I think she’s gorgeous. I would love to look like her. What I would not love, however, is to be around some of the people making comments criticizing her. Disgusting.

When I was 11 years old I was at a friend’s house watching TV. My tshirt had ridden up revealing a small roll which my friend immediately noticed.

“You have a fat stomach,” she accused, smirking. “You should eat less.”

Her abdomen, by contrast was smooth and flat with little abs showing. I didn’t understand body types at 11 but set off on a path of disordered eating and that I’ve only confronted lately.

I grew up to have a body like Kate Upton’s – long lean limbs, large breasts, and apple weight pattern. Weight gain for me acccumulates as firm visceral abdominal fat which resembles early pregnancy. I used to slave away at the gym to flatten my stomach until I realized I was just losing body fat and that it would never really change my shape. I take the Angelina Jolie approach now (she has a similar figure) and keep myself very thin. Being told to eat a sandwich is better than being asked when my baby is due.

In high school, the girl that had served me my first dose of body snarking wore a skirt one day and was teased relentlessly for her cankles. That flat stomach wasn’t the result of perfect eating or exercise; she was simply a pair and stored her fat below the belt. I felt smug at first but then I noticed she never wore skirts again, and knew too well how she was feeling.

So, reading these comments is interesting for me. People are offended by Kate’s shape but she’s laughing all the way to the bank, and good on her. I hope that, like me, she focuses on the positive aspects of her body (fills out a shirt, no one will ever call her “dumpy”) but I worry that the hissing, spitting and snark is getting to her.

thanks for this. i too am the dreaded apple. i lost 60 pounds too, so i have lots of extra skin on my stomach. i love my legs, they’re very toned, and my boobs look awesome when they’re hiked up. but man, it bums me out when, at 128 lbs and a size 4, i look at my “mother’s apron” in the mirror and realize that my stomach is simply to flabby to ever wear a bikini. when people make catty remarks toward kate upton’s “softness” and “flab” and “no defined waist” i think to myself, man if HER body gets ripped to shreds, i don’t really have a chance!

I can relate to this too with my post-baby, currently pregnant apple shaped body. It’s very hard to accept that the only way I could lose my misdection is with severe calorie restriction and constant exercise. I don’t have time for that! I’m a mother and a wife with a full time job. I’m also, apparently disgusting to the vast majority of America. It’s depressing and hard not to internalize all this body snarking.

People keep ripping on Kate Upton for her figure and all I can see is a beautiful, slim woman. I don’t get it.

I’m 5’6″, 127 pounds and have an apple/rectangular sort of shape. I could lose 10 pounds and get rid of my little gut but then I’d be too thin and would have no boobs to speak of (unlike Kate Upton I wear an A/B cup).

It bothers me to read all of the snarky comments about her weight and her shape. Not all of us were blessed with wasp waists or super flat stomachs. I think she looks fantastic and I think it’s refreshing to see someone with a natural looking (although exceptional…most of us aren’t tall and slim with naturally big boobs) figure. I like the fact that she doesn’t look super toned.

it’s hilarious to me the # of people who say she needs to do more cardio to burn the “fat” (seriously point out her fat to me). She can do all the cardio she wants, but that doesn’t get you toned, lifting weights (heavy weights) will get you toned & burn fat.

but in all honesty, leave the girl alone. she’s a curvy woman who is adorable. all this fat-shaming by other women (because as far as i can tell, men find her gorgeous) is gross. you’re ideal body isn’t some standard that she has any responsibility to live up to. knock it off.

A. Kate looks AMAZING. You will not hear an ounce of body snark from me, and I’m disgusted and offended by women talking about how she isn’t “toned” enough or is fat or fill in the blank. She looks amazing. She is beautiful. Period. End of sentence.

B. Her diet/exercise regime is undoubtedly extreme and unhealthy. But if I were in her shoes, would I do the exact same thing? You bet I would. In a vain attempt to avoid all the (apparently inevitable and unavoidable) body criticism. This is the water we swim in, ladies.

Thank you for this. I love Celebitchy snark when it is directed at people (Lindsay) behaving badly. I am saddened when it turns into women ripping another into shreds because she isn’t “perfect” and doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. Kate is beautiful and has body flaws and attributes like the rest of us. She just gets to have her flaws scrutinized in blogs and magazines. I hope she is strong enough not to be affected by it.

Article: draws attention to the insane standards placed on women and body acceptance by highlighting that even the “normal” looking ones have to put their bodies through unhealthy torture in order to achieve the standards set by the industry.

Comments section: I can’t believe my eyes are being assaulted with this ugly fat pig!!

This woman looks fantastic! Are you kidding me? She is what I would consider my body ideal. And I’m positive that EVERY swimsuit model for the SI issue did extreme things beforehand to get whipped into tip top shape. I just hope it’s not a habit as I agree that it would be unhealthy to do as a regular regimen.

Cleanse or not, she gets photoshopped to hell and back with each pictorial. Ofcourse all models get photoshopped, but hers is to the extreme of them actually creating a new body type to look curvy. Funny she is called “curvy”, but other than the boobs, which may even be implants, she is not curvy at all, only straight up and down. People with eyesight get criticized for pointing out the obvious and are called haters, smh. If I recall, Kate is from a very wealthy family. IMO she probably had contacts to get in the biz, then good PR people took over so she is where she is now, but I don’t think will last. Too many models who can do it all and look good naturally. She reminds me of the Kardashians, cheap, tacky and forced on the public.

I don’t beleive for a second that all of this weight talk is hurting Kate Upton’s feelings,the more people call her fat the more talk show appearances and SI covers she books.As I said before I do not understand why this blog wants us all to be in love with this woman.She is a pretty girl and even seems nice.But cb acts like being a busty voluptious blonde itself makes her a hero.She can see that her weight is making her popular and probably gained 10 more pounds before the shoot.I don’t think she went on any cleanse.I’m sure she is happy that unlike the other girls she can eat 3 times a day and still book jobs.She is playing this “fat model”angle up.Smart girl.

Yeah. I’ve been thinking all this time the ‘weight controversy’ is all a construct. And that her looking even slightly normal is a lame attempt by the Fashion Industry to appear more socially conscious. Would she have been hired otherwise?

This is slightly beside the point, but I am confused about this girl and her weight. She looked bigger in the SI issue than she has recently, e.g.:http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/videos/kate-upton-cat-daddy-dance/
My friend showed me this video and I thought perhaps she got skinner after the flack she got in the last SI issue… but it doesn’t look that way from the spread.

Oh my god why so much hate for this poor girl. She is skinny! She’s not curvy either! she has stick arms and legs and big boobies and a rounded tummy. How is she vulgar cheap blah blah? I can’t believe the amount of venom lol.
I think her cover is cute ummm I thought Beyonce’s what was it Esquire cover or something was way nastier….like she was waiting to be mounted… This girls cover is like I’m cute and smiling and look at my big smooshed boobies. Wow! Nothing about this girl offends me in the least. I’m actually tired of seeing the current trend of 5 foot 90 lb dark haired kardashian and Megan fox look a likes that have been dominating things lately. So ummm if this is trashy and ugly sign me up I’d love to look like her!

Couldn’t agree with you more @Cherry! I looked into doing one of the more popular all natural juice cleanses a few months back and when you actually read the nutrition labels, they’re HORRIFYING: 37g+ of sugar in some of the bottles and you’re supposed to drink 6 or more of them a day. As anyone can tell you, flooding one’s body with that much sugar-fruit derived or not-is a recipe for metabolic & insulin related disaster. And that’s only for 7 days maybe once or twice a year. But 2 weeks a month for four straight months?!? Kate is setting herself up for major problems later on…

Side note: I love Chrissy Teigen’s sense of humor on Twitter and also enjoy her food blog but I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s just made of LIES. She’s always posting tons of pictures on IG of super fatty, simple-carb filled foods & desserts that she claims to be eating all the time but on Twitter says that she lives totally free of processed carbs, or “low carb”, then she goes to US Weekly and shows them a pictorial of what a “typical day of eating” looks like for her and it’s less than 1,200 daily calories of sashimi and vegetables! Ugh. Get your stories straight, you know? Kate’s diet might sound/be insanely extreme but at least she’s being forthcoming about the measures they really take!

I am straight but I would love to go down on this woman.I have had the biggest crush on her since I saw her on SI last year and saw those GQ pics with her in the pool.Wow.I mean this girl has got me questioning my sexuality she is so freaking hot!I am married but would love to get with Kate just once.

I didn’t even notice anything about her body til you guys started pointing it out. This girl is getting called fat? THIS GIRL is considered fat? Or skinny-fat or curvy, or whatever weird expression which is actually meant to criticize her body type?

This girl is NOT FAT. I’m as skinny as they come and I think I know what a fat person looks like. This girl probably has 2 cm of extra body fat on her thighs and people are saying that is reason enough to call her fat? That doesn’t even merit “curvy” in my book. Pretty soon people will be expecting models to have no legs at all because at this point they are barely there as it is.

If she actually did that, I would expect her to be a lot more toned. She has always looked like she has never worked out a day in her life. That being said, I think the photos at the bottom of the article show some improvement. But hey, just my opinion and clearly she’s making big bucks out of whatever she does.

It’s like Portia de Rossi story – first she’s not quite the model size, she hears the complains, she hires just a little of dietican and does just a few rules to lose just a few kilos to look just a bit better in modelling pictures and bang, next thing she’s stick thin and eating half an apple a week and nothing else. Stick with your think Kate, don’t eff it up.

She’s not fat at all. That being said she doesn’t look like she works out. She has a normal body for a young person who eats normally and has a somewhat fast metabolism. I think it makes her body more attractive though bc it doesn’t look unreal.

I can’t believe you assholes say she’s flabby/soft. Her body is lovely, curvy, feminine, and DIFFERENT, thank GOD, to what we’re bombarded with in advertising every God damn day in every which way.

Some people can work out all the damn time and they still maintain a softness to their look. I have a friend who’s a black belt and even though she is tall and slim, you wouldn’t know her strength until she kicked your arse.